Romanian author accused of anti-Semitism nominated for Nobel Prize

(JTA) — A writers association in Moldova reportedly has nominated Paul Goma, a Romanian author accused of writing anti-Semitic texts, for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

“Paul Goma’s claims to fame is only by denying the Holocaust, falsifying historical facts and anti-Semitic attacks," Iosif Belous, vice president of the East European Association of Former Prisoners of Ghettos and Concentration Camps, is quoted as saying on Enews.md, a news site from Moldova.

Belous was reacting to the Union of Moldovan Authors’ nomination of Goma, a Romanian nationalist, for the Nobel Prize, according to Adevarul, a Bucharest-based daily.

Marco Maximillian Katz, director of the Center for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism in Romania, has written that Goma expressed “ferocious and hateful anti-Semitism” which suggests “Jews are guilty of the Holocaust.”

According to Katz’s analysis of writings by Goma, the Romanian author suggested in the publication Vatra Review in 2002 that the 1940 massacre in Dorohoi in which 53 people were murdered was a retaliation by Romanian troops against Jews and “an answer to aggression, an eye for an eye.”